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Some of my hive colors

My wife humors me with the hobby and the cleanup, I let her pick the colors. She figures no self respecting male beek is going to steal them. These have new queens from Koehnen, new brood to start hatching out in a few days, then we move to honey!

I use red, just not black

I like that color selection, i mix as i go, tonal shades, varried bottom boards, entrance blocks, all so that the bees have a easier way home. I also use geometric patterns and contrasting colors on the alighting boards on my stands. Each stand is painted a color and the number for that position in the yard would be: one/brown and one brown would be the most westerly hive possition on the stand. The colony in that space may change and those changes are written on a board inside so it can be kept track of. Only hive possition is fixed, all else are recorded seperate.

Chrissy, I like your method, and was thinking of doing something similar myself. You might be interested in the c.1970 book by Karl von Frisch, "Bees, their language, senses, ...etc." Something like that. He does some fascinating experiments over the span of 30+ years, including determining what colors bees "see", what geometric shapes they distinguish, and how they use these to find their home in a bank of similar hives.

“The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.” -Henry David Thoreau